Flicker

chapter five

Niall is on his way to the same bar they were at earlier last week to meet Louis and Liam to get drunk because the week was over, he had the weekend off, and felt like celebrating. He was really looking forward to feeling warm and fuzzy, heading home for a long weekend in. The past few days have been killing him as Debbie's bakery has finally been picking up business. Enough to potentially hire another person to help out around the store. He knows Debbie has a hard time making changes but a new and fresh face would be interesting and would take a load off of Niall and his nine hour shifts.

He hears the bell above him ding as he enters the bar that was unsurprisingly crowed on a Friday night, that's what the best beer gets you I guess. He spots Liam's broad figure and immediately sighs as he looks down to see Louis on his lap. He loves his mates but sometimes Louis gets a bit too handsy in the midst of anyone's presence when tipsy though he would never admit it when sober. Looks like it's going to be another long night of been reminded of something he doesn't have. Niall decides he needs to truly stop feeling sorry for himself and something that was going to help with that was getting as drunk as possible, he finally didn't have an 8 am shift to get to in the morning.

"Hey Nialler! My boy! Liam its Niall! Niall's here!"

"Yes Lou, maybe try saying it a couple more times, didn't hear you the first 3" Sober Louis would care but tipsy Louis stumbles towards Niall in a feeble attempt to pull him into a hug.

"Started without me I see"

"Sorry Niall, you know how he can be"

"Ah, don't even worry about it, Ill catch up in no time." The night is blurred with beers, dancing, and laughing. Liam, Louis, and Niall have all been friends for years now and they all fit together so perfectly. Niall even managed to dance with a cute guy but had the 4 beers he had to thank for that. The guy asked for his number but he just felt unready to take that next step and really just wanted a dance partner. Louis gave him so much shit for that the next couple of minutes until he forgot what had happened and moved on to nipping at Liam's neck and Liam attempted to keep him under some kind of control.

The clock was nearing midnight and the boys were nearing closer and closer to the line of "too drunk" before deciding to head home. Louis was practically in Liam's lap at this point as he also happened to be a sleepy drunk. Thankfully Liam still had some sort of mental capacity and was able to grab Niall a cab before heading off in the opposite direction carrying Louis.

Niall returned home and laying in bed he never felt more awake in that moment even though his body was practically 99% alcohol. With no energy to do anything else he lays in his bed scrolling through twitter seeing the internet was up to while he was gone. He suddenly remembers Harry and searches him to see if he has a Twitter, finding it Niall starts creeping through his tweets. He doesn't know why he is even doing this, he doesn't even know who this person is yet he feels some sort of want to know more. Harry's last tweet happened to be 5 minutes ago and before Niall can stop himself he is following Niall and already drafting a tweet.

@HarryStyles you look good in tiny yellow shorts you should wear them more often

He manages to type out, not caring about spelling or grammar as he was far past that point. He doesn't even know why he writes that but it seems to be invading his mind and against his better judgement he his send. Its not like anything would happen, Harry gets thousands of tweets every day, there was no way he would see Niall's.

The time is creeping closer to 3 am and his body creeps closer to a state of sleep before Niall falls asleep fully dressed.

The next morning the sun is bright, the birds are chirping and Niall wants to die with how badly his dead is throbbing. Cursing himself for not drinking more water and not preparing some pills on the nightstand for this he stumbles out of bed to attempt making himself feel like a human again. He gets half way up before getting too dizzy and laying back down. Screw getting up, its not like he has any commitment he has to get to. Lazily reaching for the phone he notices hundreds of notifications from the twitter app. Something crazy must have happened and he couldn't figure out for the life of him what it was. He opens his app to see girls he's never seen in his mentions yelling about how lucky he was. Lucky about what?

Scrolling further down his stomach lurches as he sees what all the fuss is about.

Harry. Styles. Replied. To. His. Tweet.

Shocked and barely comprehending what happened, Niall unwillingly opens his own tweet to see what the hell drunk niall did to cause this mess. There it was. There was the tweet that would change his life forever. He curses himself, he cant believe his drunk self actually tweeted that at Harry Styles! He knew he would literally never live this down because if it was up to Louis this story would be told at his funeral. Niall couldn't even bring himself to read the reply that Harry wrote, it was that mortifying. Recovering and finally composing himself enough to look, Niall wanted to bury himself in a hole after reading the tweet.

@NiallHoran Thanks. You should see my pink ones

What the hell does that even mean?!? Could there possibly be smaller, pink shorts that lived in Harry's closet? Niall was dying to find out. How the hell could this be happening? How is it that out of all hundreds of tweets Harry chooses to see and REPLY to this one. Man, they guy does something to him.

Niall doesn't know what the hell to do except like the tweet and reply boldly,

@HarryStyles I would love to. It's a date.

He doesn't know where this newfound boldness comes from and right now he can't seem to care enough that the world is going to see this tweet. And honestly, Niall knew he would be imaging those shorts for the rest of the day now.

As he is motivating himself to try and get up to shower he hears the annoying sound of his alarm, which just happens to be Louis singing ____ when he was drunk. The day he found out Niall made that his ringtone was the day he swore he would stop drunkenly singing and sadly that was not the case.

"What the hell do you want Louis? And why aren't you still sleeping, you had way more to drink than I did from what I remember"

"Because, I just happened to get a call from my manger today and guess what! Harry Styles is performing a last minute show tomorrow in London and I get to go and bitch I have a plus one with your name written on it."

The color slowly drains from his face as he realizes he gets to see Harry in person. He doesn't know if he is excited or nervous about the whole fiasco. He cant show weakness because Louis would be all over why he doesn't want tog go. Louis was bound to find out about the tweet eventually but Niall would rather hold it off for as long as possible.

"Uh, why is Liam your plus one?"

"Because Liam is meeting up with his old college roommates for dinner, they are coming in from America for a week and this is the only time they can get together."

"Ok well, what time is this thing anyway"

"Its at 5. Why don't you sound even a little excited? We finally get to see him perform! As his project manager I'm sure there will be plenty more of these but Niall! Its Harry Styles!!!"

"Yeah yeah yeah, Mr fricking pink shorts harry."

"Wait what?"

"Uh never mind Lou, listen I gotta go" and hangs up before Louis can start questioning him. That was a close call and Niall knew he should start counting down the hours until Louis found out, that boy sure was caught up on social media whenever possible.

Niall almost forgot he was going to see Harry perform tomorrow but as soon as he remembered his stomach lurched and the combination of nerves and the hangover Niall was running to his toilet before it was too late. He was freaking out and he knew it and the only thing that could calm him down was knowing that they probably wouldn't even meet him. It was a pretty big theater and it's not like Harry could spot him from the crowd let alone place him as the weird dude that sent him a tweet about his shorts. Finally, Niall could stop hugging his toilet bowel as if his life depended on it and turned on the water making it so hot his skin was red. He needed to get a grip on himself as he realized his imagine relaxing weekend at home would be anything but that.